Location Sensing and Tracking of Mobile Robots in the Plant Pipes with Particle Filters

Abstract

Pipelines of chemical plants usually contain hazardous materials and have complex routes, where mobile robots are suitable used in these area for exploration and tracking. This paper presented a simple and effective particle filtering (PF) algorithm to locate and track the position of a mobile robot in such restrict environment. The method used only the on-board distance sensors for measurement. Through comparison and estimation in several iterations, a cluster of particles surround the robot will be formed such that the location estimation can be obtained and the route-map approximation will be established. Root-Mean-Square errors (RMSE) are used to verify the tracking accuracy of the algorithm. Our simulations show that the proposed method is simple and effective both in location estimation and track development.